New to Team Bahrain Extreme alongside Sébastien Loeb and Nani Roma, the experienced Orlando Terranova won in the 6th stage of the Dakar this Friday in Riyadh, at the end of a 562-kilometer loop including 348 kilometers of special.
The Argentinian, who is taking part in his 16th Dakar (best ranking, 5th in 2013 and 2014), edged the Audi of Swedish Mattias Ekström, at 1’6 ”, and the Toyota of Saudi Yazeed Al-Rajhi), at 1’49 ”.
After losing time at the end of the special, event leader Nasser al-Attiyah (Toyota) finally conceded more than six minutes to the winner of the day. But the big loser of the day remains Sébastien Loeb, who got lost and dropped more than 21 minutes on Terranova and 15 minutes on al-Attiyah.
In mid-Dakar, the Alsatian and his co-driver Fabian Lurquin fell to third place overall, 50’25 ” behind the tandem Nasser al-Attiyah-Mathieu Baumel. Yazeed Al-Rajhi takes second place at 48’54 ”. Orlando Terranova is 7th at 1h24 ‘.
Al-Attiyah satisfied
“We missed a good opportunity to shoot today (Friday), we made navigation errors which cost us a lot of time, comments the nine-time WRC world champion. We followed the tracks of the motorcycles at km 95, even though we knew they had crashed yesterday (the cars were doing the same loop today as the one made on Thursday by the motorcycles), and we were stubborn in our error. “
“Then we managed to limit the damage in the dunes at the end, but we still lose regarding a quarter of an hour more on Nasser,” he continues. We are starting to meet a little far away, I would have liked something else for the day off. The strategy will be to continue driving: we see that once in the sand, we are faster than Nasser. So we hope that there will be many and that we can reverse the trend. But for now, there is nothing more I can do! “
On the al-Attiyah side, conversely, we did not shy away from our pleasure. “We are happy to be here. We attacked from the start, and I saw that several pilots made mistakes today. I’m happy to reach the rest day with such a head start, we’re on the right track, observes the Qatari who is well surrounded since out of the first four in the standings, there are three Toyota. We will manage the next week without taking any risks. But you still have to keep a good pace, because if you ride too relaxed, that’s where you make mistakes. “
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